


Consummation

by sidsaid



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), IX never happened peeps, Post TLJ, Post-Canon Fix-It, Reylo - Freeform, Smut, don't really know why I made this explicit, the force made me do it, the smut is pretty soft/lite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:33:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidsaid/pseuds/sidsaid
Summary: In a desperate attempt to rid herself of the bond she shares with Kylo Ren, Rey takes matters into her own hands, to dire results. A curious-cat prompt.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 13
Kudos: 201
Collections: Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	Consummation

**Author's Note:**

> So, let’s just pretend that IX didn’t happen at all. I don’t know what I’m writing, but yeah. This is a one-shot from a prompt that was too good to ignore. This is kind of technically just canon-divergent, as we are going with six months after TLJ. A movie that will never need a fix-it fic.
> 
> Here is the prompt:  
> “After one of them angrily attempts to sever the bond, Ben and Rey fall ill with a force bond-related sickness. Luke’s force ghost awkwardly explains the simplest cure is to ‘consummate’ their bond.”
> 
> Delicious, right?

‘Kriff!’

Rey didn’t have to pull up her trouser leg to know she’d broken skin, and she huffed, rolling onto her backside and looking up at the jungle canopy. She could distantly here the hustle of the Resistance base mixing with the noise of the jungle, and she breathed in, trying to centre herself. 

She looked down at her knee, sighing as the beige material began to stain red. Rey rolled the cuff up from the bottom and looked over the injury. It was deep enough that she knew it would need a bacta treatment. 

The trees around her were a mess – she’d burned through half of the trunks with her lightsaber and hadn’t been smart enough to think about the falling limbs. One of which had ended up hitting her. 

‘You’re never going to get this, are you?’ she asked herself, knocking her forehead against her knees. 

Even the course she’d planned out herself, she couldn’t complete – so easily distracted by the world around her and by the sensation of constantly being watched, whether by her friends or the person who was always in her peripheries. Though both for the same reason – to gauge her progress, to want something from her, whether the sentiment was expressed or not. 

Rey reached out for the scrap of cloth she’d tied to the tree several metres above her and used the Force to pull it back down. Taking up her canteen, she took a long drink before pouring what remained on the wound, then tied it off. 

Just as she was ready to pull herself up, oxygen seemed to leave her lungs, and the sound of the creatures that filled the forest ceased and her senses were filled with him. 

‘You’re injured?’ 

She closed her eyes, huffing slightly, not looking up from her position sat on the ground. Rey could sense him not many steps from her, standing. 

‘You know I am,’ she hissed. 

It wasn’t unusual for them to connect when either was injured, and she knew he could feel the pain in her leg, just as well as she could feel the aching bruises that sat along his rib cage from a fight two weeks ago. He’d told her, she hadn’t had to ask. 

Rey finally met his gaze, and she chewed on her cheek. At least when he had a mask, she could pretend that he couldn’t see her, and she couldn’t see him. That he couldn’t read her thoughts through her expressions or through their bond. 

‘It wouldn’t have been as bad as you think, you know.’ He murmured, moving closer to Rey and unclipping his cloak from his shoulders. 

‘What?’ she asked sharply, staying still even as he closed in on her. 

‘Training with me.’ 

Rey huffed, looking to the sky for a moment. ‘Hmm, I can think of a thousand ways you would be wrong about that.’ 

‘You might as well accept your fate, you are stuck with me.’ 

‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked, unable to halt the involuntary swallow bobbing her throat. 

He kneeled then, within touching distance of her. 

‘If there was a way, don’t you think I’d have already done it?’ 

Rey snorted, leaning back against the trunk behind her and looking at Kylo through her eyelashes. ‘You love this situation. You love being able to torment me.’ 

He hummed, cocking his head to the side. ‘When I asked you to stay with me all those times, I don’t remember the reason being because I wanted to torment you.’ Kylo paused, working his mouth and frowning. ‘Unless you have convinced yourself that I’ve lied to you.’ 

‘Maybe you’re lying to yourself, deluded yourself into believing your own lies.’

‘That’s quite convoluted, no?’

‘Just leave me alone,’ she groaned, her forehead against her knees again. 

Kylo was silent for several moments. Rey twitched when she felt him still beside her foot and a gloved hand wrapped around her ankle, just below her tied off injury. 

‘I won’t stop, Rey,’ he murmured, undoing the knot on the scrap of fabric. ‘I won’t let you walk away from me like on Crait.’

‘Have you stopped to think about why I walked away?’ 

She couldn’t open her eyes, not with Kylo so close to her, not when she could feel the slight heat of his skin through his gloves. There was the sound of a spray, and Rey could smell bacta along with the sensation of her skin cooling and healing at a quicker pace. 

‘What’s so wrong with asking you to stay with me? To share power?’ His tone was strange, too earnest. 

Rey opened her eyes to see him looking at her, eyes and heart open to her, and she wanted to scream. It was easy to fall into his eyes, and then into his words, and Rey was frightened of the day she would. 

The seam of the thumb of his glove rubbed along the still swollen skin of her ankle and Rey sat up, removing his hands from her, though he held fast onto them, forcing her to hold his gaze once more. 

‘Stop resisting what the Force wills. Can you not feel what we are?’ 

‘Not this way. Never this way.’ 

She blinked and he was gone, the last thing she saw being his frown. Rey took several deep breaths before she tied the makeshift bandage around her shin again and then pulled herself up. 

The connections had gone from happening monthly, to weekly, and then daily. It had only been six months since Crait, yet she hadn’t been able to be rid of Kylo, even when she had denied him. 

Every spare moment was filled with her own dread that he could appear at any moment, and then she would be left reeling. Even still, once he was gone and she was able to talk herself out of what he’d said, what she’d said to him, she’d find her nerve again in thinking of the next time he’d appear. 

He was unrelenting and Rey often doubted her own confidence in saying no. 

Making sure her lightsaber was attached to her hip, Rey reached out for her staff, using it as leverage as she limped across the jungle floor and towards the base where she could get her injury treated. 

‘You okay, Rey?’ 

Rose approached her, and Rey smiled, nodding. 

‘Don’t worry too much about me. How are things?’ 

‘A couple recon TIEs in the next system over, but things are still secure here. Black squadron are meeting a contact who should be able to give us more info on First Order movements. It looks like General Hux is manoeuvring troops out of Wild Space and further into the Mid-Rim.’ 

‘Not the Supreme Leader?’ she questioned.

Rose shook her head, passing over her datapad. ‘Barely been sighted since Crait. I thought Finn told you?’

‘Probably thought he was saving me from something by not telling me.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Rose frowned. ‘You don’t think he’s on a personal mission to find you?’ 

Rey sighed. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ She scratched her brow, then wiped the sweat that had been able to bead there. ‘I’m what’s standing between Kylo and what he wants.’ She was ready to say goodbye and move past Rose, though the smaller woman halted her with a hand. 

‘What _does_ he want?’ Rose asked. ‘Snoke is dead and he’s the Supreme Leader, yet even after that, he’s left Hux in charge.’ 

‘Perhaps power wasn’t everything he thought it would be,’ Rey answered, her voice low. She blinked and looked to Rose again, who was frowning deeply. ‘He wants me to face him, though I know none of you would let me do that.’ The smile she added was forced, no matter how genuine Rey attempted to make it. 

Rose took Rey’s hand in both of hers and squeezed them tightly. ‘I would trust your judgement. The Force – you know what it shows you, so only you can make that decision.’ 

Rey swallowed, considering, and nodded. ‘Thank you, Rose.’

The young engineer smiled, let go of Rey, and moved off towards the out of commission X-Wings, while Rey was left to continue towards Doctor Kalonia. 

She let the older woman treat her injury – a bacta patch – in silence, allowing Rey to consider what she would do next. In the end, she bypassed lunch and went straight towards the crate that held the Jedi texts, and she thumbed through the same pages again, convincing herself that the bond between herself and Kylo was more parasitic in nature, rather than a deeper connection. A connection the texts described in passing as dangerous, as fatal and a Jedi’s greatest strength and weakness. 

Her hands shook as she read, trying to find a solution so that at the very least, she wouldn’t have to see Kylo anymore. That she could feel like her own person again. 

Rey’s finger stopped over a paragraph on Kyber crystals and the origins of the Sith’s corrupted crystals. She thought of Kylo’s cracked saber, of how strange it had felt in her hands; that it resisted her yet called to her for rescue. Split in two by nature. Perhaps in a similar vein, she could resist the bond, she could split the connection between them. There had to be a way of splitting the bond without her having to divorce herself from the Force itself. Not to hide away like Luke, not when the galaxy was still at war. Not when her friends still depended on her. 

She dropped the books back and marched off then, resolute. There was still pain in her leg, but Rey managed to navigate through the trees and along the cliff faces until she was deep within the jungle. She stayed thinking about being rid of the bond, being rid of Kylo’s voice in her head and how exhausting it had been these six months. How frustrating it had been to keep it from her friends, and to have to deal with it. Yet what she thought amounted to a satisfying conclusion did not come. She felt terrible, and Rey knew it was the Force telling her that she was straying away from the path. 

When the sun began to lower, Rey slowed and stopped. Dropping to her knees where the canopy split and let in a sliver of light, she crossed her legs beneath her. 

Rey breathed deeply, filling her lungs and then releasing them, trying to rid herself of her surroundings. To reduce the cacophony that was the Force to a dull whine and to think only of their bond, to feel only their bond. She felt it spark as she did so, trying to reach out to Kylo, but she pulled it back, tied it down so it didn’t move beyond her. Visualising tying it away, reducing it to nothing, killing it. Rejecting it with her whole being as it writhed and screamed. 

As it retreated, Rey felt the pain she expected would come. Like the cracked crystal in Kylo’s lightsaber, she was causing a fissure, she was pushing and pulling until it would snap. Even still she fought through it, her stomach aching and the pinch and stream of a nose bleed coming. 

‘Rey, what are you doing?’ His voice was strained. He felt it too. ‘Stop it, you don’t know what you’re doing.’

‘I’m freeing us from each other,’ she managed, nails carving into her palm and burning. 

‘No,’ he panted.

She couldn’t see him, only feel him and how he seemed to tear to reach for her, yet she pushed and pushed at him. Until she felt her body breaking, until she was screaming. 

Rey awoke when night had fallen. As she opened her eyes to darkness, she squinted, feeling a piercing headache draw across her vision. She scrambled to sit up, feeling crusted blood on her lips and in her nose. Her shirt was soaked with it, and she felt dizzy as she pulled herself up, feeling nothing of the Force. Feeling it shirk away from her.

‘Rey?’ There were shouts and then she was against a firm chest, being held up. 

‘Finn?’ she croaked.

He sounded relieved, and then she was being lifted off the ground, Chewbacca’s warm fur grounding her, waking her up. 

‘We heard screaming, we’ve been looking for you for hours. What happened? Did something attack you?’ 

Chewbacca said something, though Rey didn’t catch it. 

When she woke next, Leia was drawing a damp cloth across her face and wringing it in a small bowl by her side. 

Rey groaned and turned, but the general held her steady, a hand drifting across her forehead. 

‘You’ve done something, haven’t you?’

Rey shook her head, denying it. ‘I have put things as they should be.’ 

Leia hummed, wiping at Rey’s face again. ‘It doesn’t feel as if you have.’ 

The young Jedi sat up, looked down at the stained shirt she wore and tried to ignore the ache in her head, which was easier when she could acknowledge that she couldn’t feel the bond. Though she couldn’t feel anything else either.

‘Rey, I don’t think you’re well.’

‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me,’ she answered. 

Her eyes moved around the camp, and she pulled herself away from the general’s tent and towards the Falcon. 

It was more painful than she had anticipated and when she reached the bunkroom, Rey collapsed on her bed, feeling nothing but fire flowing through her veins. 

Cool hands were against her face, and she blinked to see Finn looming over her, his eyes panicked. ‘Chewie, looks like she caught the flu in the jungle. She’s burning up.’ 

‘Can Jedi get sick?’ Another voice asked – Rey guessed that it was Kaydel.

‘I don’t know.’ 

Rey felt her shoulders be lifted, and a pillow was placed under her neck. She was fed warm soup and a cool cloth placed on her forehead. 

She knew what the flu felt like and this wasn’t it. Rey felt like she’d caught fire, and that her insides were trying to consume her. The Force was out of her reach and everything hurt. From her fingers down to her eyelashes. Even the tears that spilled from her eyes burned as they left streaks across her cheeks. 

When unconsciousness came again, she awoke in a white room. There was no sensation attached to her, and it was like she was a ghost, drifting with no sense. 

‘What did you do, Rey?’ The words were a delirious mumble, and her attention was brought to colour. 

Kylo lay in a double bed, the sheets pulled up over his legs, but his naked chest was left exposed, and it was soaked in sweat. His skin was paler than usual, almost green and his hair stuck to his forehead as his lips quivered. 

He couldn’t see her, he didn’t seem to even sense her, and Rey panicked as she felt stuck within the white walls, watching Kylo suffer. This was not about suffering. It never had been. 

Rey felt better when she woke up, well enough that she could pull herself out of bed. Finn was lying on the opposite cot, and she got up, changing into clean clothing and moving to Finn to wake him up.

‘Rey? You feeling okay?’

She nodded. ‘Better, I think I’ll be fine now.’ 

‘What happened yesterday?’ He asked. 

‘I think I must have caught something,’ she lied. ‘Thanks for looking for me. Not sure if I’d have made it back on my own.’ 

Finn breathed out, seemingly relieved. ‘That’s good. Do you need me to get you anything?’ 

Rey shook her head. ‘It’s fine, I’ll be okay.’ 

He hesitated, but nodded, leaving the ship before Rey. 

Her hand was gripping the metal bars above the cot, feeling her stomach coil and Rey felt the loss of what she had done. She’d thought it would be worth it, but it was hollow where she couldn’t feel Kylo. Having had the bond for six months, its disappearance felt like something had been taken from her, and the space it left was filling with poison. 

‘What _have_ you done, Rey?’ she whispered to herself.

Even as she reached out to feel the Force, to let it flow through her, it barely came. Her anorak fell from its hook, not into her hand. She couldn’t differentiate the Force signatures of those on the base, it was just noise without any shape. 

The pain had abated, but it didn’t seem ready to disappear and she moved from the bunkroom, taking herself out of the ship and just behind it. She sat where she couldn’t be seen, crossed her legs and tried to meditate. 

‘That won’t work, Rey.’ 

She jumped, opening her eyes and meeting Luke’s blue and translucent eyes. He was frowning heavily, and she stood, stumbling backwards and further into the forest. 

‘You can’t just ignore the path the Force leads you on. You can’t reject destiny.’ 

‘I can make my own choices,’ Rey answered, moving away from the ghost and into the woods away. 

Luke huffed. ‘You know that’s not true. The Force does as it pleases, for reason, for purpose. You can fight against it, but that won’t erase the truth.’

‘Why would the Force connect us? I don’t understand.’

‘It is as it should be.’ 

Rey stumbled and cried out, feeling pain shoot up her spine and leaving her huffing on her knees. 

‘It has split you in more ways than one, Rey.’ 

‘It will pass. Everything passes.’ 

Luke shook his head. Rey felt the strange sensation of his ghostly hands on her shoulders and she turned to him. ‘No, Rey. Going against the Force like this, trying to cleave a part of yourself, will not end well. It will only ever end in madness or death.’ 

‘No.’ She closed her eyes, moving away. ‘No, no that’s not fair.’ 

‘The Force was never about what’s fair.’ 

Rey’s nails dragged through the dirt, fisting it in her hands before she pushed herself up again and turned to face Luke. ‘Then I will just reverse it through meditation.’ 

‘That may not be enough to cure you both.’

‘It has to be enough.’ 

Luke was silent for a moment, his brows furrowing. ‘Otherwise you must restore the bond through other means.’

‘What other means are there?’ 

He didn’t seem to want to answer and Rey could almost see the muscle twitch in his cheek. ‘In the most absolute of ways. The one way that guarantees a connection forged in the joining of two people. That irrevocably links you...body and soul.’ 

Rey frowned, not understanding. ‘You make it sound as if I need to marry him.’ 

‘To the Force you already are. Two pieces of a whole. There is only one way to join those two pieces again.’ 

Luke disappeared then and Rey stared at where he had been standing, turning over his words in her mind, her comprehension of them too slow. So slow that when she realised, he’d said the Force saw them as kismet. As sharing a soul, she knew what he had meant. 

Yet what was she to do when the Force escaped her? 

Rey knelt to the floor again, folding her legs and taking several deep breaths. She would do it this way, this was the only way.

It wasn’t like the day before. This was like walking through fire, coaxing the Force itself to listen to her, to give it what it wanted rather than take it away. Rey hadn’t known pain like it before, and when an hour had passed, she felt weak. While she could feel the Force around her, it was dull. The sickness that had overcome her remained. 

She was ready to scream out in frustration, but Rey knew she was the only one to blame. Her actions were misguided and now she had put Kylo in danger. It was one thing for her to do what she wanted, but that had been the point. She wanted to be independent of Kylo, she wanted to face him on equal ground. This wasn’t equal. 

Moving the short distance back to the shipyard, Rey made sure Chewbacca wasn’t anywhere in sight, and she climbed into one of the small non-combat passenger crafts and then into the cockpit, readying the ship for flight.

It was only when she was hovering several hundred metres above the ground, that she could see her friends scrambling, and reaching for communicators. The comms went off, but she ignored them, plotting an immediate course out of the system and into the next where Rose had said the First Order recon flights had gone. 

The ship was flagged within minutes and the commlink went off. 

‘This is First Order command. You are piloting a reported Resistance ship and will require processing and questioning. Do not resist.’ 

Rey huffed, feeling her limbs tire again. ‘I will not resist. I am surrendering for killing Supreme Leader Snoke.’

There was silence for a moment as the three TIEs closed in on her. ‘Standby for extraction.’ 

Several minutes passed before a command shuttle dropped out of hyperspace and that was when she started up the ship again. Pushing it quickly into full tilt, forcing the TIEs to either disconnect or to be dragged with her. One of them crashed and exploded, while Rey continued on. 

Even if she couldn’t sense him, the fact that the command shuttle didn’t shoot at her meant that Kylo was on the ship. She went barrelling down towards Phaeda, breaching its atmosphere as she was chased from behind. 

Landing at the base of a rock formation, Rey pulled herself out of the ship and started running as quickly as her body could take. Climbing, pulling and diving through the dense wood, the wind cooling her aching limbs and burning skin. She kept going until she couldn’t hear any sign of the First Order TIEs or the command shuttle, and she stopped by a small creek, taking a glug of water before resting against a trunk. 

‘Surrendering? I hadn’t expected that.’ 

Rey turned, blinking as she looked at Kylo. They were separated by nothing more than moss and earth. His hair was pasted to his damp forehead, not looking much better than she had seen him in her vision. Yet even then, his proximity seemed to help her, seemed to give her limbs some vigour. 

‘Not much choice,’ she murmured before her knees hit earth. 

He must have chased her on foot too, because he huffed heavily and he stumbled when he reached for her, having injured his ankle at some point. 

‘You failed to get rid of me so badly, that you’ve killed us both. I suppose this is what you wanted?’

‘You know it’s not what I wanted,’ she responded, trying to regain her breath. 

Kylo moved closer to her, and Rey felt her skin itch. It had been so long since they were both so close, and this time it was different. Even damaged, their bond was stronger than it had been on Crait. She could even feel their hearts beating in tandem, as if the steady thrum of his pulse could be felt in the hum of the earth beneath her fingers. 

‘So why did you corner me here? To trap me?’ 

She nodded. ‘It’s the only way.’ 

‘The only way to kill me?’

Rey shook her head. ‘To fix what I have done.’ 

She pushed onto her feet again and moved towards him, trying to ground herself with the Force as she approached. Trying to reassure it that she wouldn’t fight it any longer. That she would understand the path it had placed her on. 

‘You’re cold,’ Kylo commented when she finally stumbled into his arms. 

Rey sighed, looking to find where his skin was exposed. Her arms were free of wrappings, yet he was covered from the neck down. Finding no other choice, she reached for his face, and even though he hesitated, he relaxed into her touch when her fingers grazed along his features. 

The effect was immediate. Like touching sunshine with how her finger tips warmed, and she sighed with relief, feeling further strengthened. 

‘How are you doing that?’ Kylo questioned. 

‘No matter how hard I try, I can’t be rid of you,’ she murmured. ‘The Force wills us together, and I can’t go against its will.’ 

Kylo’s mouth turned, confused. ‘You are accepting this fate willingly, now?’ He asked. 

‘I must, but know that this doesn’t change anything.’ 

He shook his head. ‘No, it changes everything,’ he answered, eyes flicking between hers, incredulous.

They both sunk to their knees, Rey’s fingers drawing lines that connected his constellation of moles, seemingly trying to consummate their connection with this alone.

Kylo could sense her urgency – in wanting this over – though couldn’t understand why she so willingly traced the arch of his brow, let her thumb draw over his bottom lip. 

He removed his gloves while she touched him, and when he was free, he reached up, taking her hands in his, feeling her grip tighten in his own. Even though she said it meant nothing, he could see the lie. The words, the vitriol, didn’t reach her eyes. 

‘I know you,’ he whispered. ‘I see you and I know.’ 

‘So, you know my nature. You know my limits too.’

Kylo sighed. ‘It changes everything,’ he mumbled. 

Rey closed her eyes, trying to feel the Force once more. To feel it surge through them both, and it was horrible with how lovely it felt. How wonderful it was to feel like this was their purpose, and in the back of her mind, the Force whispered of how beautiful it would be to feel as one. 

Her lips were partially parted when she met hers with Kylo’s. He seemed to expect it, and they both sighed when it happened, as if restraints had been loosened. They breathed in each others air, filling the other’s lungs, their hands joined until Rey broke the connection, her fingers pulling free and finding the front zip on his tunic. 

Hands delved within the material once it was loose, and then under the soft cotton undershirt to parse over his chest. She held her hands over his heart, feeling invigorated by the soft beat of the organ. 

‘Rey,’ he mumbled against her lips. ‘What are we doing?’ 

Her tunic was unzipped and over her shoulders, his fingers already pulling at the belt at her waist. 

Both weapons hit the forest floor and yet their lips had barely moved. Just resting against each other while their hands roamed quickly. 

‘Luke said this is the only way,’ Rey said, and there was a sadness in her voice.

Kylo pulled back, looking earnestly at her, at the flush across her throat. ‘And you’ll regret it?’ 

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Tears fell and Kylo caught them with kisses. ‘If I had known – I would never have done it. The bond isn’t your doing, and I lie. I lie too much and to you worst of all. Even when you can see through it.’ 

‘You still do it anyway,’ he said, smirking wryly. His fingers lifted to her hair, and he pulled the single bun free, letting her hair breach over her shoulders. He combed through it, meeting her gaze with a fierceness that Rey felt stir in her very soul. ‘You know all my thoughts, yet you push them away.’ 

‘You could manipulate me,’ she whispered, frightened.

He shook his head. ‘I want you to come to me on your own terms. I’ve always wanted it to be your choice. This is your choice. Though if we both perish, that doesn’t erase what I feel.’ 

Rey swallowed, fingers clinging to his face, nails scratching at the slight stubble at the base of his chin. ‘We can never go back.’ 

Kylo nodded. ‘I know,’ he confirmed.

She took a deep breath and leaned in again, capturing his lips with hers, pressing against him as his hands slipped to the small of her back. It was gentle and filled with such depth of emotion, that Rey felt tears streak across her face. It felt like the beginning and end of everything in her life to this point. The Force spurred them on, brightening their bond, even in its tattered state. 

Their clothes were discarded quicker than Rey had thought possible, not quite sure knowing how, but finding that they were both naked and her eyes had free rein to parse across Kylo’s body, and her hands and lips could do the same. 

It was Kylo who leaned back, letting Rey straddle his legs, eyes on him before flickering down to what lay between them. There was a hesitation in both of them and realising it, they took each other’s hands. Kylo wrapped Rey’s around his length, and Rey pulled his to palm her. His fingers slipped through her wetness, interested and exploring what he found there. Revelling in her twitch as he passed over an elevated part of her anatomy, his finger dipped inside of her, and her muscles constricted in response.

He panted, heavy, as her grip tightened, pulling lightly until his head knocked back. 

‘You’re beautiful,’ Rey murmured, the words spilling from her without thought. ‘When I touch you it’s like seeing a sunset. Like dancing in the rain.’ 

‘I want to see you dance in the rain,’ he reached for her and joined their lips again. 

It was Rey who slipped forward, slotting perfectly over him, pushing down when she felt him nudge against her entrance until she was filled with him. Until there was only sensation where there had been a lack of it before. Even just joined liked this, it was like the Force awoke within them both. 

Neither of them could move as they were filled with the universe’s very make-up. They were made of stars.

Rey moved over him slowly, unsurety in her own movements, and partially blinded by what they were doing in and of itself. Kylo seemed the same, his eyes blazing into her. Instead, Rey chose to kiss him again, satisfaction in feeling how much space he took up within her physically and beyond. This was where Rey wanted to be. 

Kylo turned them, pressing kisses against Rey’s throat and shoulders, his hips moving gently, sliding in and sliding out. 

‘I can feel you through the Force again,’ Rey managed, stifling a groan. Her arms wrapped around Kylo’s shoulders and she buried her forehead against his shoulder. She could feel her own soul tying around his, entwining and coiling like a wild animal in its nest. 

‘Rey,’ he panted. Fingers pressed into her waist, before he caught himself against the upturned earth, fingers sinking into the soil as he held himself up. ‘Look at me,’ he requested. ‘Don’t look away.’ 

She loosened her hold, meeting his eyes again. Her hand reached out, a thumb tracing the scar she had made and leaning up to kiss him again. ‘You know I can’t give you everything,’ she whispered. 

‘Even a drop. That would be enough.’ 

Her brows furrowed, even as she felt her toes curl and her desire to hold him closer grow. 

‘Don’t push me away any longer.’ Kylo begged. 

Her eyes held his, her heart stuttering as she tried to make excuses, to say why it wasn’t possible, but it didn’t work. Not when she felt the Force flowing through her veins, giving her life when they were together. That it felt like the meaning of everything. 

‘I have little choice,’ she murmured. ‘We are one split into two.’ 

Kylo’s angle changed and Rey’s eyes squeezed closed as she shuddered, crying out. Her nails making crescents across his skin. 

‘Be with me,’ he whispered, the words ghosting across her cheek. 

‘Promise me,’ she countered, pants growing loftier. ‘Promise me something. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be enemies with you.’ 

He huffed and Kylo was silent, putting more strength into his thrusts until Rey’s words slipped out of reach and she was quaking under his touch, lights dancing and her world glowing with life and warmth. Kylo followed, groaning into her shoulder, his hips stuttering as he spilled within her. 

Kylo slipped from Rey and her thoughts grew muddied once more. Or perhaps it was how they always were, but with Kylo everything seemed to make sense, and things that were confusing before, somehow gained clarity with him.

‘Promise me,’ she repeated, her fingers tightening on his waist, holding him close against her.

He held her gaze, his fingers combing through her hair, his expression indecisive. ‘What will you ask of me?’ Kylo’s hand cupped her ear and his thumb drew across her cheek and along the side of her nose. 

Rey pulled herself closer against him, her naked skin beginning to chill. She wanted to fold herself into his arms. ‘End this all, end the fighting. Be with _me_.’ 

‘You would have me?’ His brows gave his thoughts away and Rey felt her heart ache.

‘You don’t believe me?’ 

Kylo breathed. ‘You’ll never be my enemy, but I can’t concede.’ 

Rey huffed, eyes dropping to his chest, at the sweat that dripped there, and she groaned in frustration. ‘You are insufferable.’

And he had the nerve to laugh, hard enough that his chest vibrated underneath her hands and she pinched him until he stopped. ‘You can feel what I feel. You can’t deny our bond, so what use is this?’

‘You can’t have both.’ 

He hesitated, eyes narrowing. ‘You would really have me?’

‘Would it make a difference to you? You’re insistent on denying me.’ 

His smile seemed to remain within his thoughts alone. ‘Come to me. Where there is power and you would have agency.’ 

‘The First Order must end. It can’t go on, this can’t go on any longer.’

‘And what? You want me to destroy it all? How would I do that?’ 

She closed her eyes, breathing through her nose. ‘We would do it together.’

‘It’s too late —’

‘— it’s never too late,’ she interrupted. 

He looked at her, silent and pensive. Rey could feel him examining beyond what he held in his hands. Softly caressing her thoughts and emotions. Feeling himself there, and seeing what she wanted, what she had seen in that vision over six months ago. What she dreamed. 

She reached up, her fingers drawing his hair away from his temples, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. ‘Snoke is gone. You don’t have to do this anymore. You are free of him, of this all. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘You’re all that matters,’ he admitted, even confused with his own words. 

Rey shook her head. ‘There’s a world even beyond the both of us, Ben. Can’t we save it? Can’t we do something?’ 

He swallowed, breathing heavily, Rey feeling him having stilled at his own name. At a reminder of who he had been, who he could still become. Kylo pulled himself away from Rey, sitting up and looking down at her before grabbing for his clothes, pulling them on. 

She sighed and did the same, facing away from him, trying not to tear up because she’d tried. She’d tried so hard. And knowing that it didn’t make a difference - that he could say she mattered, but he wasn’t prepared to tear himself away from Kylo, from everything Snoke had made him, and made him want – felt like a splinter in her heart. 

‘Okay.’ 

His words were muted, no joy to them and Rey felt the thick weight of his cloak over her shoulders. He turned her, his hands cupping her cheeks, his gloves still discarded on the floor. 

‘That’s it?’ 

Kylo nodded, though did not divulge any more words. Rey took it to mean that he didn’t know what to say either, because his mind was still a storm of emotions, and on a face that was usually so open, not even she could read them. 

He kissed her then. Softly, warmly and deeply. It was a goodbye. 

‘I’ll lead the troopers away. Go back to your ship and fly low until nightfall. Then leave immediately.’ 

Kylo turned to move away, but she gripped onto his hand. 

‘You will come to me?’ She questioned, looking into his hazel eyes. 

He nodded. ‘I will always come to you.’ 

Then he was walking away, trudging back the way he had come, leaving his cloak with her, and picking up his gloves as he passed. 

‘And I to you,’ she murmured after him. 

Rey waited until she couldn’t hear him any longer, and she pinned the cloak at her throat and moved through the trees, tracing her own path back to the ship. It was easy to avoid the troopers and she followed Kylo’s instruction until she was back in the Ajara system. It was only as she landed, and the shuttle was surrounded by her irritable friends that Rey realised how much better she felt. It wasn’t brief wellness, and Luke had been right. Though that also came with the realisation that their bond felt stronger, felt forged and unbreakably solid. 

She hesitated before opening the release, her fingers drifting across the coarse material of Kylo’s cloak that still smelled of him. It was too long on her, yet she didn’t care. Removing it, she folded it carefully, placing it in her mostly empty pack and stood, releasing the doors and stepping out into the humid jungle. 

This was a turning point. Things would be different from now, and she knew it and believed it with every fibre of her being. 

**Author's Note:**

> I love you all.


End file.
